Out of His League

by Cathryn Parry

“Brandon,” he said quietly. When the boy’s face turned, Jon saw in the streetlight that tears were streaming down his face.

  Jon dropped his duffel bag and went to the kid. As far as Jon was concerned, it was a misconception that boys didn’t cry. He’d known girls in his neighborhood growing up who’d never shed a tear. Then, there were Bobby and Francis, who were the complete opposite—there was a time when they cried almost every night. Big, heaving sobs into their pillows in the dark, when they thought nobody was awake or listening. It had ripped Jon’s heart out. He’d wanted nothing more than to make them feel better, every day of his life, as long as he had breath.

  When Jon had been a kid, he’d talked his brothers out of their down moods, charmed them into feeling happy, made up crazy games, told stories, laughed, gathered people around them. Anything, to make them not think about what was happening to their family. And for all these years, it had worked for Jon, too...or so he’d thought.

  But this time, with Brandon, there were no words. Jon had disappointed the boy. The kid’s hero had come crashing down, in a way that was personal to him. Jon had laughingly abused the same substance that had taken Brandon’s mother away.

  Jon could never undo that.

  He got down on both knees and hugged the kid to him. Brandon put his arms around Jon’s neck. He choked out sobs, sweaty and hot and with snot dripping from his nose onto Jon’s practice shirt. But Jon held on to him tight.

  A car pulled into a spot behind them, illuminating them in bright halogen headlights.

  “Come inside,” Jon said to Brandon in a low voice. “Let’s go upstairs to your aunt.”

  “Sh-she doesn’t know,” Brandon said, wiping his eyes with his fist. “Sh-she was in surgery all day. Mrs. H-Ham saw the article and picked me up from school.”

  Good, that would make it easier for Jon. “Then I’ll tell your aunt everything now, so she knows, too.” He didn’t want to, but he had to. It was the only decent thing to do.

  He picked up Brandon and carried him to the elevator, his pitching arm be damned. Even soaking wet, the kid didn’t weigh a third of what Jon routinely bench-pressed. And Brandon wasn’t deadweight—he clung to Jon’s neck. The poor kid had never known a father of his own, and it was a shame. Say what Jon would about his sad childhood, at least he’d always had a dad, and for the first seven years of his life, a mom—a great one. That meant something.

  Jon knocked, and Liz opened her door wearing yoga pants and a cotton T-shirt that clung in all the right places. But now wasn’t the time for appreciating Lizzy’s beautiful body.

  She saw Brandon’s tears, and her eyes widened. She slung the dish towel she was carrying over her shoulder and held out her arms to the boy. “Are you okay, honey? Did you fall and hurt your knee?”

  Jon shook his head and set Brandon down. “Physically, he’s fine.”

  “Thank you for bringing him upstairs,” she said to Jon. She ushered Brandon inside and got him some tissues. It struck Jon how much of an effort Lizzy was making. She had come a long way in a short time with the boy. It made what Jon was about to tell her so much harder.

  Lizzy trusted Jon. Or, she was beginning to. And he was going to stomp that trust into the floor.

  “Brandon,” Jon asked quietly, “will you please play quietly in your room while I tell your aunt the news?”

  Brandon nodded without looking at either of them, and headed for his room.

  “What news?” Lizzy perched on the arm of a chair, rubbing her arms and looking worried.

  Jon sat on the couch and girded himself. “I know you don’t read the sports pages, but there’s an article about me that’s pretty high profile.”

  “Really?” She smiled slightly, trying to make the situation lighter. “Which is exactly why there will never be anything long-term between us. Because publicity isn’t my strong suit.”

  He ignored the message he didn’t want to hear. It was the wrong time to bring it up, and it irked him. “Brandon is pretty upset about it.”

  “Oh, all right.” She stood. “Let’s look at the article then.”

  As if he would ever carry around that newspaper with him or even let it into his house or car. He snorted. “I don’t read the stuff written about me, good or bad. What other people think of me has no bearing on how I act or think.” He paced the small living room. Shit. Who was he kidding? “Actually, that’s not true. I do care what you think of me.”

  She looked at him for a long time, silently nibbling her lip. It brought to mind the fact that he’d been here last night, and they’d made love in her bedroom. How had everything gone so wrong, so fast?

  Finally she walked to the kitchen table and, from a pile of mail on the table, picked up a rolled-up newspaper secured by an elastic band.

  “Great,” he said. “You get home delivery.”

  “In my mailbox. I don’t always have time to read it, though.” She pulled off the elastic band and flattened the newspaper on the table. He caught a whiff of printer’s ink. She flipped through the sections—the front-page news, the national news, the local news, the living section, the business section...the sports pages.

  Upside down, Jon saw the headline, Farell Named as Troublemaker in Captains’ Clubhouse, alongside a photo he hadn’t noticed earlier, of himself in street clothes, long hair and a five-o’clock shadow. He looked like a criminal.

  Yeah, the bastards in the media had nailed him good.

  Lizzy hesitated. She glanced from the article to him, as if afraid to proceed. “Do you mind if I read it?”

  “By all means,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll wait while you do.”

  She lowered her head. From his peripheral vision, he saw Brandon enter the room and flop into a chair beside the sofa.

  Icing on the cake.

  Jon paced the length and width of the tiny apartment. Waiting for Lizzy to finish reading and render a verdict in the lengthening silence was torture. Just a few years ago, he would’ve told her that the article was garbage, and that if she didn’t take his side, then they were finished. Most of the guys he played with would’ve said the same thing: take a stand. But Jon couldn’t. With Lizzy, he had to pace, saying nothing, letting her read the lies and hyperbole written about him. It was hell.

  Her face fell. Not only was his career dying in front of his eyes, but so was Lizzy’s good opinion of him.

  She glanced up from the newspaper, distress reading clearly in her big brown eyes. “You drank shots of alcohol in the clubhouse? Before every game?”

  “No,” he said quietly, “it was beer. Never hard liquor. And it wasn’t before every game, just our home games.”

  “And that makes it okay?” She stood, staring him directly in the face. “Jon, I have to ask, do you have a problem with alcohol?”

  “You know that I don’t,” he scoffed. “I’ve spent hours and hours with you. Have I had so much as a drop of alcohol in your presence?”

  Brandon whimpered. Oh, hell. Jon had forgotten about him. He raked his hand through his hair—his short hair—that he still wasn’t used to. He crossed the room and took Lizzy by the hands. “This isn’t what it appears to be,” he said in a low voice. “Believe me, not them.”

  She pulled away. “This isn’t...harmless to me.” She wiped her hand over her mouth. “It’s personal.” Her voice cracked.

  “Lizzy,” he said gently, “I didn’t know you or Brandon back when this happened.”

  “Of course I know that.” She glanced over at her nephew. “Brandon, honey, you shouldn’t be listening.”

  The kid looked scared. He was only eight, and his world already had a big crack in it, even without Jon’s help.

  Jon went over and led Brandon to his temporary bedroom. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, smoothing the boy’s hair. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “It doesn’t look okay,” Brandon whispered.

  “Trust me to fix it. I promise you, I will fix it.” He sat on the bed and put his arm around the boy f
or comfort. After a few minutes, he got up to leave.

  Lizzy watched from the doorway, her face in shadows. But a tissue was pressed to her nose, and that told Jon how she was feeling about him at that moment.

  Outside the boy’s bedroom, he reached for her. “Lizzy, honey...”

  She shook her head. Her arms wrapped around herself, she walked back to the kitchen, back to that damn newspaper.

  “My sister...Brandon’s mother...is in rehab for drinking,” she said in a strangled voice. “For binge drinking. Social drinking—like this.” She tapped the newspaper. “I know it might sound silly to you, but I shared her childhood, too. We had so many alcoholics in our family. I don’t...I can’t...touch the stuff, partly because I don’t trust myself.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “It’s in my genes.”

  “Lizzy...” He walked over to her and stood close, close enough to feel the heat from her distress, but he didn’t touch her. She didn’t want him to.

  “It’s not in my genes,” he murmured, keeping his voice down in case Brandon was listening. “I don’t remotely have a problem with alcohol, not even close. But as long as we’re together, since it bothers you that much, I won’t drink when I’m with you. It’s not a big deal to me. I’ll respect that of you and Brandon.”

  She seemed to be wavering. He touched her shoulder, felt the soft cotton, warm from her body heat. Suddenly, the thought of losing her—of her telling him to leave—was making him feel desperate. He had to make her understand why he’d made the choices he had.

  “Lizzy...you’re on a team, right? A team of doctors and nurses. Let me make an analogy. Let’s say your top surgeon—your big guy, the one who’s famous, who has the great skill—is a real, excuse the French, ass of a person. He gets along with nobody. He has a bad attitude. A chip on his shoulder. And let’s say that his bad mood is infecting other people on the team, especially the new kids who have come up from the minors...from med school, I mean.” He coughed.

  “And then let’s say,” he continued, “that the whole pitching staff—the doctors—are being affected. They’re botching surgeries. People are noticing. So how can you fix it, since the hospital isn’t going to fire the star? What if you, as a middleweight doctor on the team—not a star, not a newbie, either—had a talent for calming the big dog? And this particular big dog likes the idea of sticking it to the team, of breaking the rules on a game-by-game basis. So you take a few swigs of beer from a communal six-pack before the game with him. It makes him feel like a rebel. It makes the team feel like there’s cohesiveness in having a secret group ritual before every game.”

  “But, Jon, that ritual made you lose most of your games,” she pointed out. “You had a lead in the standings until the last few weeks of the season.”

  “That’s just it, Lizzy...it didn’t make us lose. We followed the ritual throughout the spring and summer. We stopped right about the time our slump started. The big guy, our ace, was having shoulder problems, I suspect, though it was—is—pretty hush-hush. But it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure it out. I mean, the speed on his fastball dropped from 98 to 94 miles per hour. And he lost every game he started in September. His bad attitude came back. The younger guys caught it, too.

  “If you ask me, Lizzy, that ritual had helped us. Yes, alcohol is bad—drinking in the park on game days is against the rules and we’re horrible role models for having done it. I get that. In retrospect, it was a mistake. But, Lizzy, it didn’t go down like this reporter wrote that it did.” He pointed to the newspaper. “It’s just irresponsible that he used anonymous sources and didn’t even speak to me. I’m unavailable? Give me a break. And now, I’m not supposed to defend myself because I’m under a gag order from my team management. I wasn’t even supposed to talk to you about it.”

  She moved her hands from her mouth, and he could see the fresh distress on her face. “You always have to help other people, even when it hurts you, don’t you? Even to your detriment.”

  “What?” That’s what she’d taken away from his confession?

  “When are you going to look out for yourself, Jon, first and foremost?”

  “I was looking out for myself. But it’s what team players do.”

  “Yes, but the rest of them weren’t looking out for you, were they?”

  No. No, they were not. On the contrary, someone had thrown him to the wolf pack.

  “I’ve watched you these weeks,” she said. “You look out for your brothers. You look out for me and for Brandon. You even look out for your teammates. But you don’t think about yourself, not enough.”

  It sounded suspiciously like she was forgiving him. He grinned at her. “That’s why I like you, Lizzy, you care.”

  “I do care about you, Jon.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “I care about you, too.” He stroked his thumb along her cheek. “Can I stay tonight on your couch? There are two news vans outside my apartment building.”

  “Did they follow you here?”

  “No, and I won’t ever let them. You’re not going to be involved in this.” He paused, glancing to the partially open bedroom door. “I need to talk to Brandon now.”

  She reached her arms around him, and it felt great. “Put yourself first. I mean it.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I have to.” She rubbed his shoulder. “You’re growing on me. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  He was flattered. “I won’t.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Appeal to Vivian’s better nature. It’s the only way.”

  Lizzy tilted her head at him. “Are you talking about the Sunshine Club?”

  “I am.”

  “So...is that the reason you were so gung-ho about doing community service for the team?” A realization seemed to be dawning on her face. “Jon, were you expecting the scandal to come out?”

  He wasn’t sure what she was getting at, but her eyes were wide.

  He took her hand and wove his fingers through hers. “It wasn’t as mercenary as that.”

  “Yes, but you chose Brandon,” she reminded him. “You came and visited me from the very first night.”

  “I visited you because I wanted to see you, Lizzy. Not because of any scandal I was covering.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me about the drinking until now?”

  Because he was public, and she wanted to stay private, and they were back to the problem that always plagued them. He sighed. “I was protecting you from it,” he confessed.

  “Well, don’t do that anymore.” She swatted him, but in a playful way that told him that while she was serious, she still forgave him. “I mean it.”

  In future, Jon knew that it could get far worse for her if sportswriters knew she was important to him. He could never let that happen. “Lizzy, I wasn’t using you.”

  “I know, but do you see how it could appear that you used Brandon? Isn’t it convenient that he’s a cancer survivor with the Sunshine Club?”

  “That’s not how it was. I had my own issues with cancer in my family. I didn’t even want to go into that damn kids’ cancer ward. Brandon happened to be there that day, and he’s the one who talked me through it—”

  Damn. She had fooled him again. She had an expression on her face as if she was looking right into him, seeing all his problems. As if she was studying him the way she studied her archaeology magazines and her medical job.

  “Look,” he said, pushing away from her. “Let me talk with Brandon. He probably didn’t wash up yet, so I’ll help with that. Then I’ll sit with him until he’s feeling better.”

  “Please do not nurture us.” She put her hands on her hips. “Jon, I see you. You’re deflecting from what we’re really talking about.”

  Great. Talking with her was like living with a shrink. “I just explained to you what’s going on with me. If you’re not interested, there’s nothing more I can do here.” He headed for the door.

  But she wasn�
�t following. She just stood with her arms crossed, a bemused look on her face, studying him.

  He could go to Coach Duffy’s place or even Brooke’s condo. Scratch that, both were terrible ideas. Staying at Brooke’s would be the wrong move for obvious reasons. And Coach Duffy...

  Would lecture him. Just like in high school. About getting serious. About overcoming his family problems. “Everybody has family problems. You got dealt a tough break. We all get tough breaks, some of us sooner rather than later. But the mark of a man is how you pick yourself up and overcome them.”

  Jon closed his hand around the doorknob. If he was going to have to face hard truths about making poor choices and allowing himself to get sucked into a scandal and throwing everything away that he’d worked so hard for, then he would much rather face those truths with Lizzy. There was always the hope that he could sweet-talk her into bed and cover her mouth with kisses....

  “Jon?” Her tone was gentle. “You told me last weekend that your mom died when you were young. Did she die of cancer?”

  He had expected many things, but not that question. Jon turned to look at her.

  She wasn’t saying anything. Just studying him. Quietly compassionate.

  “Yeah,” he said, exhaling. “But don’t tell that to any of the Sunshine Club people.”

  “I won’t,” she said quietly.

  He trusted her. His Liz was a locked vault. Other people...Susan, if she knew...

  “I don’t want to be exploited like that,” he said.

  “I understand.” She leaned her forehead into his shirt—his sweaty shirt, reminding him that he hadn’t changed yet. “And now you understand why I didn’t initially want my nephew involved in that hospital charity, because I don’t want him exploited like that, either.”

  He stroked his hand over her head, making her sigh. “I won’t let him be exploited. I promise you that.”

  * * *

  SHE BELIEVED HIM.

  Elizabeth pressed her hands around Jon’s waist, her forehead to his chest. She was overcome with feeling for this outwardly tough, masculine man who hid his inner vulnerability about his past. Unable to stop herself, she’d crossed the gulf that separated them and pulled him close to her. She’d known as soon as he’d shown up at her front door that something was seriously wrong, because he was still in his workout clothes. He had razor stubble on his chin and jaw, and his hair was tousled. Grass streaks were on both knees of his close-fitting gray baseball pants, and his white shirt with the navy blue sleeves smelled of his scent.